


In the Hot Seat

by hotdogharvester



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-17
Updated: 2018-11-20
Packaged: 2019-05-24 10:12:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,823
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14952707
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hotdogharvester/pseuds/hotdogharvester
Summary: The Pet is gone. Kaon wants something new: something different. That's where you come in. (archive warnings will be updated as chapters are added)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I’m playing extremely fast and loose with sizing. I really have no fucking idea what I’m doing. I tried looking up Cybertronian heights but the “scale” entry on tfwiki gave me a headache. Let’s assume, for the purposes of this fic, that Kaon is three times taller than you. For me that puts him between 15 and 16 feet. I know that’s probably shorter than he’s supposed to be but honestly who gives a shit. Every goddamn robot character in the IDW series is taller than the tallest living human so like…god I don’t even know. This is nuts. What the fuck am I doing???

Life is weird. Being abducted by aliens is one thing. That’s a whole story right there, isn’t it? You could fill a five-hundred-page novel with just that, but for you that just makes up a short stretch of time on the strangest Tuesday of your life.

            You were out walking down to the 7/11 to get some sour gummies and maybe a can of malt liquor when suddenly you weren’t. If you’d known you were going to be abducted by aliens you might have dressed for the occasion. As it is you’ve been summoned into outer space in ratty sneakers, sweatpants, and a t-shirt with “SEX MACHINE” printed on the front in impact font.

            In less time than it takes to blink and with a quick whiff of ozone, you find yourself in a harshly lit metal cube with glowing purple bars making up the wall on your left. No warning whatsoever. No light from above, no shadow of a flying saucer, nada. You were on Earth and then you weren’t. The transition is so instantaneous and seamless that it catches you mid-step. You have to stumble to a halt to keep from walking straight into one of the walls.

            You must have fallen and hit your head or something. That’s the only reasonable explanation for appearing in a place you’ve never even seen before that looks suspiciously like the set from a Star Trek knockoff. The floor feels solid under your feet. When you brush one hand against it, the metal wall is smooth and cold to the touch. It feels real, but that doesn’t mean much. Everything in dreams feels real.

            “Hello?” you call out, surprised at how steady your voice is.

            “Is someone there?” a strained voice replies.

            “I think so?”

            “Where are you?!”

            The voice sounds like it’s coming somewhere to the left when you’re facing the bars.

            “I’m not really sure…where I am. Or how I got here.”

            “Oh. Is there anyone ELSE here?”

            A voice to your right sounds off in assent, but the owner of the voice quickly confirms that they also have no idea where they are or what the hell is going on. When you get up very close to where the bars meet the dull metal wall, you can just barely see more bars stretching off to the left and right. There must be other cells here, set out in a straight line so that the occupants can’t see each other.

            You extend one finger and just barely graze the edge of one of the glowing purple bars. It burns like an open flame and you jerk back.

            After making a slow circle around the “room” you realize that it isn’t really a cube. The floor is a square, but the walls go way, way, WAY up, dozens and dozens of feet. On the other side of the bars is a huge open space with a colossal door set into the far wall. It’s at least the size of one of a shipping container, or a subway car.

            You’re wondering, with an appropriate amount of dread, just what needs a door that big when the door slides away and the robot enters the room.

            You’ve seen bigger things than this robot: mountains, apartment buildings, etc. Except, those things weren’t moving. Those things didn’t have arms and legs and shockingly human facial features. You’ve never seen an apartment building made of living metal kneel down to appraise you with orange eyes set deep in a face bigger than your entire torso.

            The other people in the room gasp and scream but your jaw just drops. This has got to be a dream. There’s no logical fucking explanation for this. Jesus Christ, the most you’ve ever even thought about robots was that time you bought an R2D2 thing for your cousin for his bar mitzvah. What the fuck is going on in here on this day?

            “Oh, this ain’t fuckin real,” you whisper.

            The giant fucking robot chuckles. It CHUCKLES. IT FUCKING CHUCKLES. Then it stands back up to its full height and addresses you and your unseen fellows.

            “Hello, humans! You may call me Buzzkill. You have been selected to take part in a very exclusive intergalactic trading program, run by me. Here’s how it works. I am taking you all to an auction. There, you will be sold as individuals to whoever cares to offer the most money: could be slave traders, could be people looking for strange pets, could even be people who just really like tormenting organics and would rather someone else do the hunting. Then, I will take the money and depart, and you will be left with your new owners. Any questions?”

            The cacophony of wails and yells echoing around you tells you there must be at least five more people here. Someone off to the right has launched into a “Hail Mary” and the person to your immediate left is repeating the words, “This is BULLSHIT,” over and over again.

            All you can think to say is, “hey what the fuck,” and it comes out in a dead monotone.

            Not knowing what to do, you sit down. Then you stand up again. Then sit back down. The room is at once oppressively huge and claustrophobic. There’s nowhere to go and nothing to do. The thing called Buzzkill smiles.

            There’s a faint crackling sound from up above. If you crane your neck, you can just barely make out what looks like a speaker in one corner of the ceiling. A PA system of some kind? Buzzkill doesn’t seem to notice the static; he’s a bit preoccupied by all the shouting and the crying. But then music starts playing—like a multilayered, chiptune waltz—and he freezes. The smile drops right off his giant face. Without another word he turns on his heel and sprints out of the room, not even stopping to close the door behind him.

            A scream.

            In a very short space of time you’ve gone from not knowing that giant robot aliens exist to knowing that not only do they exist, but they also sometimes abduct human beings for sinister gains, to knowing that there are things in this universe that can make such giant robots scream in undiluted terror.

            Some kind of desperate babbling is echoing from outside the room. You can’t tell if it’s meaningless noise or if your abductor is praying for mercy in some buzzing, clicking robot language. You’re not even certain if he’s the one making all those sounds until something answers him in a deep, crackling tone that makes your hair stand on end. That noise—that voice—has a quality to it that reminds you of the markings on poison arrow frogs, or a dog showing its teeth. No translation necessary. Stay away. Stay far, far away.

            You almost trip in your scramble to get up against the back wall. There’s nowhere to go but that’s as far as you can get from the horrible sounds resonating just out of sight. Something really fucking nasty is going on out there. You flash back to Qui-Gon Jin saying, “There’s always a bigger fish,” and feel just a bit angry that that’s the first thing you think of.

            The good news is that the nightmare voice has fallen silent. The bad news is that it’s been replaced by an ear-splitting clangor of robot screams, metal on metal, and finally an incongruously wet splurting sound, punctuated by a spray of luminous pink fluid that splatters all over the open doorway. Five whole seconds of blessed silence follow. Then come footsteps. Then comes the scariest thing you’ve ever seen in your life.

            If this thing were human sized, it might be funny. The black and purple color scheme in combination with the giant tire shoulders and the spooky mask face looks a bit like if Tim Burton tried to design a Mad Max villain. However, this thing is over twenty feet tall, and your whole life is flashing before your eyes as it turns its head to regard you and your fellow prisoners.

            It croaks out three syllables—confirming itself as the source of the nightmare voice—and a smaller but still relatively gigantic red robot with fucking _tesla coils_ on its shoulders and flat black eyes enters the room. The purple one turns slightly to look at the red one, and the red one lets out a hum that you can feel in your bones. Then it smiles.

            The purple one makes an exaggerated display of clearing its throat, then begins to speak in plain English. Its—his?—words don’t have the same effect but the tone is similar enough that every syllable gives you chills.

            “Hello there, humans. You are about to meet your deaths.”

            This time, no one yells or cries.

            “You may not be aware, but you are about to have the great honor of being removed from your wretched existence by the galaxy’s most elite team of crusaders. You can thank our dear departed friend Buzzkill for putting you in our path. It isn’t often that our noble duties allow us to soil our hands with the blood of organics, so please believe me when I tell you that your deaths will be the most _privileged_ of deaths. Why, even in–”

            “Wait,” says the red one, also in English.

            The purple one looks over in apparent surprise.

            “I want that one. Let me keep it.”

            It takes you a moment to realize that he’s pointing at you.

            There’s a beat. The purple one turns back to the cells and says, “Will you please excuse me for a moment? My colleague and I need to discuss something.”

            And then they start hissing and buzzing and beeping at each other in some infernal robot language. This goes on for several minutes. The purple one puts his hands on the red one’s shoulders but the red one shrugs him off, gesticulating wildly. They’re not shouting, not exactly, but it’s obvious they’re having some kind of disagreement. The person off to your right is repeating the “Hail Mary” again, slow and quiet. No one else is speaking aside from the two robots.

            At last, the purple one growls out a last complaint and crosses his arms, staring at the wall. The red one kneels down in front of your cell.

            “Hello, little one. My name is Kaon. What’s yours?”

            His voice is a touch monotone, neither very low nor very high. It turns out he doesn’t have flat black eyes. He doesn’t _have_ eyes. There’s just two empty black pits where his eyes should be. He has fucking tesla coils coming out of his goddamned shoulders and a turbine on his chest and _no eyes_. You’re staring.

            “Um. I. Um, I, uh, s-sorry, I’m…that’s not m-my name, I’m just very…I…am…very very frightened at the moment.”

            “Understandable,” he laughs. “You’re safe now. Nothing’s going to hurt you as long as I’m around.”

            “I…okay.”

            “Here. I’ll let you out of there. “

            The robot who calls himself Kaon leans forward and creates a passageway through the lasers by blocking the bottom with his left arm and the top with his right. You hesitate.

            “Go on,” he says. “They can only penetrate organic material.”

            Still unsure, but unwilling to stay, and considering that if he was going to kill you he probably would have done it by now, you step carefully over his left arm and plant both feet on the outside floor. He removes his arms and the lasers spring back as if they were never blocked. Before you can get a good look at the people in the other cells Kaon scoops you up and cradles you RIGHT NEXT TO HIS CHEST TURBINE.

            “Uh, excuse…what? Hey! What are you doing?”

            Your instinct is to squirm but you’re at least ten feet off the ground right now and if you fall it will be bad.

            “It’s not safe for you here,” he replies.

            He’s already out the door into the ship’s similarly barren hallway, his metal feet clanking on the metal floor.

            “But you said I _was_ safe.”

            “With me you are. You won’t be if you’re still in that cell when my colleagues arrive.”

            So there’s more of them. How many more? How many goddamn robots are in this place?! Are they all this huge? Are there BIGGER ONES?!

            “What about the other…the other people?”

            “What about them?”

            “What’s going to happen to them? You can’t…you can’t just let them die.”

            “Yes. I can,” says Kaon. “I’m saving _you_. No one else. Unless you want me to put you back.”

            “No, but they–”

            A scream. Multiple screams. A deep throated, metallic laugh, and then the screams cut off with a wet ripping sound.

            “Oh my god,” you say. “Oh my god.”

            You’ve frozen in place but Kaon grips you tighter, as if expecting you to make a break for it.

            “Shh. You’re alive, and you’re safe. Think about that.”

            “Why? They didn’t DO anything! They were just prisoners like me! They didn’t DO ANYTHING! What the FUCK is going ON!!”

            Kaon continues to shush you, cradling your body as he carries you through the dimly lit hallways of an alien spaceship. At a fork in the path he pauses and emits another bone-tickling hum before turning left.

            “I’m having a nightmare,” you mutter. “I have to be dreaming. None of this shit makes any fucking sense.”

            “Believe that if it makes you feel better. I don’t want you to be upset,” your savior/captor replies.

            “Me having some kind of psychotic break is the only logical explanation. Like…aliens? Robot aliens? Me in space? Fucking nonsense. I must have fallen and hit my head and this is the _Jacob’s Ladder_ purgatory I have to navigate to–”

            “Is it really that surprising, little one? Cybertronians have been present and known on Earth for some time now. Possibly longer than your lifetime.”

            You stare up at him, momentarily distracted from All This Fucking Bullshit.

            “What…the fuck are you talking about. There aren’t any aliens…what? I’m pretty fucking sure I would remember giant robots from space landing on Earth.”

            “The terms ‘Autobot’ and ‘Decepticon’ don’t mean anything to you?”

            You shake your head no, then remember that he’s blind and say, “No.”

            “Unless you grew up in intense isolation, you should have heard of us.”

            “I live in a major metropolitan area. Like, absent any government conspiracies I am 99% certain that giant alien robots have never landed on Earth and made themselves known in any way. That hasn’t fucking happened.”

            Kaon taps a finger against your side.

            “Hm. I’m going to suggest to my colleagues that we do a more thorough sweep of this ship. It’s possible our departed friend Buzzkill may have been using some interdimensional gateways in his slave trading scheme.”

            “He…what? Some what?”

            “Buzzkill may have been using a rudimentary portal to other realities to snatch humans from worlds with no knowledge of Cybertron.”

            “Wh…what? Why?”

            Kaon shrugs.

            “What the fuck? Why would anyone…if he had crazy dimension technology what was he doing kidnapping people?”

            “I won’t pretend to understand the mind of a traitor. Clearly he was unbalanced.”

            “A traitor?”

            “Ah, of course you wouldn’t know. Never fear, I’ll give you a complete education later. My teammates and I are dedicated to exterminating traitors to the Decepticon cause. Buzzkill was a deserter. He’d been in hiding until the war ended, and I suppose he must have thought he would be free from the consequences of his cowardice. Not so.”

            Down the hall, a figure steps out of an arching doorway: another robot, at least ten feet tall, with piercing eyes and no visible mouth. It spits out a phrase that sounds remarkably similar to “What the fuck?”

            Kaon burbles something back and the smaller robot erupts in unmistakable fury. It reaches for you and Kaon jerks away, stopping just long enough to kick the other robot hard enough to send it stumbling into the wall. You don’t say anything— don’t even scream—but even so he clamps one giant hand over your mouth before continuing down the gloomy hall.

            Two left turns and one right turn later, Kaon stops in front of a door significantly larger than him and removes his hand from your face. One press of his palm to a glowing square on the wall and the door opens. The room beyond is dark, and when he walks in and the door slides shut behind him it’s pitch black. He sets you down on the floor. You stumble and almost fall the second he isn’t supporting you.

            “This is my private habsuite,” he says. “There’s more than enough room for the both of us. I don’t have a place for you to sleep just yet but I can arrange for something before the day is out. You are not to leave this room without my permission. That may change in the future, once my colleagues have become accustomed to you, but until that day comes I will not be able to guarantee your safety if you leave here without me.”

            You turn in a slow circle. Your eyes are not adjusting. There’s nothing to adjust to.

            “Um. I can’t…it’s really dark in here.”

            “Oh, of course! You’re sighted,” Kaon exclaims. “Just a moment.”

            A moment later harsh fluorescent lights blink on overhead. The habsuite is sparsely decorated, which makes sense. It’s not as if he can see any of it. The walls are bare. The only piece of furniture besides the berth is a gigantic standing desk, so tall you can’t see the top of it.

            “I may be blind but the previous tenant wasn’t. I haven’t lit these lights in a very long time,” he says. “Now, let me take a closer look at you.”

            Kaon lifts you up and sits you on top of the desk. Then, very gently, he runs his fingers all over your face. You’re still too shell-shocked to react much. Even when his hands drift lower and he slips a thumb under the collar of your shirt you don’t move or make a sound.

            “Interesting,” he murmurs. “I had forgotten that humans wear clothes. I suppose I’ll have to get some more for you, hm? That shouldn’t be too much trouble, though. We’ll be passing a trade port in a couple days.”

            Kaon squeezes and prods until he’s mapped your entire clothed body. He does it so quickly you don’t really have time to be appalled when he presses a finger to your crotch and then withdraws it a moment later. Then he cups the side of your head in one giant hand, big enough that if he made a fist and squeezed he could crush your skull. The smile on his face is soft and tentative.

            “You’ve been through a lot just now,” he says, “and I won’t be offended if you need some time to warm up to me. I do hope we can be friends soon, though. As long as you behave, I promise to take good care of you.”

            “I want to go home,” you blurt out.

            You hadn’t been planning on saying that. The words just escaped from you. You’re not even certain that all of this is really happening, and that you aren’t at home right now having an elaborate nightmare.

            Kaon strokes one giant finger down the side of your face. His smile is hanging a little crooked.

            “Don’t we all, sweetspark?”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> lmao and it only took me FIVE FUCKING MONTHS  
> there's gonna be a fair bit more, don't worry  
> I make no promises as to when the next chapter will appear

After returning you to the floor, Kaon tells you to stay put and that he’ll be back soon. It’s not like you have anywhere to go. He’s nice enough to leave the lights on so you’re not stuck in insensate blackness.

            With no real expectation, you pull your phone out of your pocket. It has eighty-seven percent battery and no service whatsoever. You dial 911 and nothing happens. You type out a text message to your best friend— _Help, I’ve been abducted by aliens, please call the FBI_ —and it fails to send. Tapping the facebook icon brings up nothing but a blank white screen and that infuriating blue circle. You don’t even bother with email. So what. If this is a nightmare you’d probably just see a message about how you’ve failed all your high school classes and also you’re naked at the dentist’s office or some shit.

            All that’s terrible, of course, but it isn’t until you try to open up Pokémon Go that the gravity of the situation starts to set in.

            Trying to conceive of never seeing your friends or family again is too big. The loss of your home planet when you had never even considered leaving Earth a possibility—hell, even leaving the country in this economy seemed out of the question—is just ridiculous. Your brain won’t even begin to grapple with it. But all your little virtual friends? Your dozen pikachus and your three aggrons and your shiny gyarados? Gone, all gone, locked away in an unreachable universe, never to be upgraded again.

            When Kaon comes back, loaded down with supplies, he finds you in a fetal position on the floor.

            “Oh, you poor thing, what’s wrong now?”

            “Nnnnnnothing much, just, uh, just losing my mi–HOLY FUCKING CHRIST!”

            Kaon’s entrance into the room reveals the colossal robot standing in the hallway, who is three times as wide as him and almost twice as tall, with two comically huge arms extending from spiked shoulders and two comically small arms set in his cylindrical midsection. The small arms are holding a metal crate. He has glowing red eyes, because of course he does, and when he makes eye contact with you his face contorts in a very human expression of disgust.

            If you weren’t so busy scrambling to get as far away from him as possible you might be offended. You bolt up, stagger back, trip over your own feet, and wind up back on the floor, scooting crab-style toward the back wall.

            This new robot is too fucking big. He has too many arms. He’s too big, he has too many arms, and he’s looking at you like _you’re_ the weird one. You were just starting to consider that maybe these giant robots aren’t hallucinations and then came this bullshit. This is absolutely uncalled for. This is nonsense.

            “What! WHAT! WHAAAT IS THAT.”

            Sweat beads up in your armpits and around the waistband of your pants. The air in here is a tad chilly but you’re so nervous it might as well be high noon in July. Every cell in your body is screaming at you to run away but there’s nowhere to run.

            Kaon smiles as endearingly as an eyeless giant robot can.

            “Oh, you don’t need to be afraid of him! This is Helex. Helex is my friend, and he’s not…well, no, he’s extremely dangerous, but he’s not going to hurt you. I made him promise.”

            When you were working as a summer camp counselor long ago, a camper once presented you with a fistful of slugs first thing in the morning. The expression on Helex’s face right now looks just like the one you must have made when that rotten kid dumped a bunch of living slime in your lap at shits o’ clock. Kaon says something to him in robot language and then pauses.

            “You haven’t told me your name yet.”

            Still feeling shell shocked, you tell him. Kaon repeats it back to you, a note of delight in his voice. He crackles out a strange, mechanical approximation of it to Helex, who says nothing. Helex sets down the crate and turns sideways to enter the habsuite. His footsteps make the floor shake. You can feel your heart beating in your throat.

            Kaon makes a vague gesture and chews on his lower lip for a moment before turning and speaking to you.

            “I want you two to shake hands.”

            “You want me to _what_?”

            “Do humans not do that? It’s a friendly gesture.”

            “No, we do that, it’s just…I…what?”

            Kaon tilts his head back toward Helex to say something, and Helex’s reaction is remarkably similar to your own. His eyes widen and his mouth falls open in disbelief. He looks ready to sidestep straight out of the room, but Kaon clasps one of Helex’s comically small hands in his own and says something imploring. Helex wavers, his eyes darting between you and his friend.

            Kaon reaches toward you but keeps his left hand fastened on Helex.

            “Come on,” he says.

            “What?”

            “Come over here and shake my teammate’s hand.”

            “I…really do not want to do that. I’m still very very scared and he’s very big and it doesn’t even seem like he really wants t–HEY!!”

            Kaon crosses the floor in two long strides and spirits you across the room. Up close, looking up and up and _up_ at Helex, so close that you can barely see his face, you can see that his comically small arms are each the size of your entire body. The fists of his outer arms are as big as bumper cars. Kaon holds you up like Rafiki presenting Simba to the Serengeti, hands clamped around your midsection. You’re about at eye level with the stylized face badge in the center of Helex’s…chest? You’re not sure if the glass chamber is part of him or just a piece of equipment he wears. Is there even a difference with robots?

            Helex casts one more troubled glance over your head at the robot holding you. Then, with a long sigh, he extends his smaller right arm in your direction. Kaon digs his fingers into your ribs until you mirror this movement. Your hand and Helex’s hand flutter around each other for a moment, two alien beings temporarily united in the most awkward moment of both your lives so far. Then you touch your palm to his, and he closes his fingers around your whole hand and most of your forearm. Two slow pumps and he releases you. His grip is like a hydraulic press on the “just barely weak enough to not crush human bones” setting. He stares into your eyes the whole time.

            Helex shoots one more glance at Kaon and leaves the room with no small amount of haste. Rather than putting you down, Kaon bundles you back against his chest.

            “There now, was that so terrible?”

            “I, uh, I don’t think he likes me.”

            “He doesn’t. He probably never will.”

            “Then why did you make me do that?”

            “I want to make at least a token attempt at assimilating you. Better not to put it off. Anyway, while he and I were gathering supplies, we solved the mystery of your presence in this universe.”

            “…ok.”

            Kaon sits down on the berth and positions you carefully in his lap.

            “There are currently extreme consequences for anyone caught abducting human beings from Earth. Well, from _this_ Earth. If there’s nothing to trace a human being back to Earth it can’t reasonably be proved that they were illegally trafficked or enslaved. The state of the Cybertronian economy is such that it’s cheaper to invest in a small gateway to a parallel universe than it is to risk being caught and fined by Earth’s or Cybertron’s government. Surprise, surprise: Buzzkill had a contraband gateway generator amongst his possessions. I’m sure you can guess the rest.”

            The flat planes of Kaon’s thighs are cold and unyielding under you. The chill in the air, plus the uncomfortable seating, reminds you of shivering on the bleachers outside in high school gym class. How strange that this situation—so far removed from anything you could have imagined—should make you think of something so mundane and forgettable.

            “This really is happening, isn’t it?” you whisper.

            Kaon strokes the back of your head and smiles.

            “If I could be pulled into this universe I could be sent back, right? Can you put me back? Please?”

            “I could have,” says Kaon, “but Helex and Tesarus smashed the equipment.”

            A cold, liquid feeling is puddling in your guts.

            “Can we…find more? Buzzkill must have gotten it from somewhere.”

            He hesitates before answering.

            “You’ve only just arrived, little one. Why so eager to leave?”

            He doesn’t sound disdainful or cruel, though it’s a terrible question to ask. You shift nervously and shy away from his hand.

            “Ok. Listen. Before I say something I regret, I just wanna say…thank you. Sincerely. Thank you for…saving my life. You didn’t have to do that and I really do appreciate it.”

            He just smiles. His empty eye sockets are angled down at you.

            “But the thing is…I have a life. You know? I have a home, and a family, and friends, and…none of this was supposed to happen. I know I can’t really ever repay you for not letting me die, but…what do I have to do to get you to send me back to my Earth?”

            “Nothing,” Kaon replies. “I’m not going to do that.”

            You clench your right hand into a fist and hold it like that until it gets painful.

            “What about dropping me off somewhere where I could make my own way back?”

            “I’m not going to do that either. I am not letting you go.”

            “Huh. Ok. Uh. Wow, uh, I really thought…well, why not?”

            A somber little smile blooms on Kaon’s face.

            “Well, I lost something that was very dear to me recently. A pet. It was really more than just a pet to me, and I’d been hemming and hawing over whether it was even right to consider getting a new one, and then there you were! So I thought, ‘Why not?’ I’ve never had an organic before and something about you just seemed right.”

            You freeze.

            “A _pet_?”

            “Yes,” he adds. “I think you’re very cute.”

            “You what.”

            “You’re so small! You’re soft, and warm, and portable, and you don’t need toilet training. I assume. You are an adult human, yes?”

            “Excuse me? Of course I’m an adult. What the fuck, I am not an animal, I’m a _person_. I have a life. I have a _life_. You can’t just do this t–”

            “I think,” he says, enclosing both your hands in one of his, “I can. I rather think that I can. I think that your life that you keep mentioning is quite literally in my hands. I also think that I am the only thing standing between you and my teammates, who would all very much prefer that I threw you into the void of space or cut you into thin slices. Oh, you wouldn’t know about that, would you? Decepticons, historically, don’t take kindly to organic life, but I’m feeling self-indulgent. Whimsical, even. So, I ask you, little human, if you’re really so opposed to being under my protection and thus subject to my whims…what are you going to do about it?”

            The answer to that question, in the short term, is that you’re going to cry. Your body is crackling with tension, and now the tension is so intense that it’s breaking. Hands still held firm in Kaon’s grasp, you slump down as much as you can and sob. He makes a concerned noise and pulls you against him.

            “Shh, don’t be so upset. You’re not in danger. No one’s going to hurt you. Think of it…hm, think of it this way, little one. On Earth you were one among billions. A single mote of dust in a terrible storm. But here? On the _Peaceful Tyranny_? You’re unique. You’re mine. And that makes you so very special.”

            This doesn’t make you feel any better, but you know it won’t do you any good to say so.

            “Anyway, it’s almost time for the post-mission status report. When that’s done you and I can sort through the supplies but for now we’re needed elsewhere.”

            “Why do I have to go?”

            “I want to introduce you to the rest of the team. The sooner the better.”

            “You want to introduce me to the other robots who _want me dead?_ ”

            Kaon huffs at you.

            “They want me to be happy more than they want you to be dead. All right? I swear on my spark that no harm will come to you as long as you’re in my arms.”

            This, of course, is no great reassurance, but there’s nothing you can do about it at the moment. Kaon gathers you up in his arms again and leaves the habsuite. You’re too disoriented to keep track of the twists and turns in the hallways.

            Before opening a new door, you can hear loud beeping and clicking noises on the other side that you know now are alien words. When Kaon enters the meeting room with you in tow everyone else goes silent. All eyes fall on you. Helex still looks disgusted. Tarn is gripping the table so hard his fingers are leaving dents. The skinniest one hisses out something positively venomous in tone. There’s a fourth one with a big pink X where his eyes should be, and the only thing you can recognize in his face is a frown. _His_ face? _Its_ face? His, probably. Being in this room with them is like sharing space with a number of malevolent bulldozers. It’s not doing anything good for your blood pressure.

            “Can you please tell them that I also do not want to be here?” you whisper. “Can you just, like, explain that you are the reason why I am here in this room, that if it were up to me I would be somewhere else? Please tell them that.”

            Kaon sits in the only empty chair and says nothing. You peek up over the edge of the table and make tentative eye contact with Tarn.

            “Hey, sir, lord…whatever your title is, can _you_ tell them that I didn’t choose to be here right now? I know you can understand my speech so I was hoping maybe–”

            Tarn screeches out something _ugly_ that makes the lights flicker. Kaon tilts your face up toward his own.

            “Tarn says that if you make one more sound he will rip you in half.”

            A quick glance confirms that Tarn’s beady eyes are locked on you. Shaking, you wrap your arms around yourself and scrunch into a ball in Kaon’s lap. His hand never leaves your head, even when the meeting stretches from minutes to hours. The robotic dialogue melts into white noise, and Kaon’s lap warms under your body. Lacking other stimulation, you keep busy with one of the most impressive dissociative episodes in human history, trying and failing to grapple with what has become of your life.

**Author's Note:**

> I think Kaon gives off a strong "Mark Duplass in Creep" vibe.


End file.
